Are you booting up your Xbox One only to find a backlog of game updates haven’t downloaded and are clogging up your queue? Us too.
A temporary fix involves holding down the Xbox One’s on-console power button to fully power it down, then restarting it. While it tends to fix downloads for a couple hours, the problem tends to rear its ugly head not long after.
Here’s what we did to actually fix the problem.
Ensure updates are being downloaded automatically
First, let’s make sure you’ve actually set up automatic download of updates.
- Press the Xbox button to open the guide.
- Select Settings > All settings.
- Select System > Updates.
- Under Games & apps, select Keep my games & apps up to date if it isn’t already.)
- (While you’re here, under Console, select Keep my console up to date if it isn’t already.)
All sorted? Good. Let’s continue.
Ensure your Xbox has Instant-on enabled
Your Xbox One needs to be in Instant-on mode to download updates.
- Press the Xbox button to open the guide.
- Select Settings > All settings.
- Select Power & startup > Power mode & startup.
- Under Power mode, select Instant-on if it isn’t already.
Do you have enough storage space?
Some of our downloads weren’t actually clogged, but a bit broken — and that’s because we had games with 12GB updates trying to download to a portable hard drive with only 1GB or so of available space remaining. You might need to move some digital games around your various storage options to ensure you’ve actually enough room to update them.
Fixing clogged updates
If you’ve gone through the steps above, things should be working properly. Still having problems? We found that clearing our console’s alternate MAC address — even if we didn’t set a manual one to begin with — actually solved the problem. Here’s how to do it:
- Press the Xbox button to open the guide.
- Select Settings > All settings.
- Select Network > Advanced Settings.
- Underneath Alternate MAC address, select Clear.
- Select Reboot when prompted.
Hopefully, clogged game updates will be a thing of the past.
Did this work for you? Sound off in the comments area, below.
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